Amazon.ca Books: Best of May 2008

Spotlight Title: Nixonland by Rick Perlstein

How did America go from Lyndon Johnson's landslide Democratic victory in 1964 to Richard Nixon's equally lopsided Republican reelection only eight years later? The years in between were among the most chaotic in American history, with an endless and unpopular war, riots, assassinations, social upheaval, Southern resistance, protests both peaceful and armed, and a "Silent Majority" that twice elected the central figure of the age, a brilliant politician who relished the battles of the day but ended in disgrace. In Nixonland, Rick Perlstein makes a familiar story fresh and relentlessly compelling, with obsessive original research and a gleefully slashing style--equal parts Walter Winchell and Hunter S. Thompson--that's true to the times. --Tom Nissley

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The Chris Farley Show by Tom Farley Jr. and Tanner Colby		A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif
You don't have to be a rabid Chris Farley fan to enjoy The Chris Farley Show, an honest, endearing oral biography about a truly funny, deeply troubled addict. Made up mostly of excerpts from intimate interviews with family, childhood friends, famous castmates, and writers, The Chris Farley Show is a vivid portrait, told plainly by the people who knew him best at every stage of his life.		A 1988 plane crash killed Pakistani dictator General Zia and several top generals, and a smoking gun has yet to be found. Mohammed Hanif's outrageous debut novel, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, tracks at least two assassination vectors to their convergence, incorporating elements as diverse as venom-tipped sabers, poison gas, the curses of a scorned First Lady, and a crow impaired by an overindulgence of ripe mangoes.
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The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon		Beijing Coma by Ma Jian
In The Lazarus Project, Aleksandar Hemon brings to life the mysterious 1908 killing of Lazarus Averbuch, the 19-year-old Jewish immigrant shot dead by Chicago's police chief while delivering a letter to his home. Hemon springs a century ahead to tell the story of Vladimir Brik, a Bosnian-American writer who travels to Eastern Europe to unearth what really happened. Deftly cross-cutting the aftermath of Lazarus's death with Brik's journey, Hemon weaves a masterful literary adventure both epic and intimate.		Shot in the head at the prodemocracy protests at Tiananmen Square in 1989, a young man slumbers for ten years. While he's slowly retracing the experiences that brought him to this dream state, the world around him morphs into a nearly unrecognizable place: China at the turn of the 21st century. Ma Jian's Beijing Coma is a unexpectedly visceral and daring novel that reveals the profound personal consequences of this struggle for freedom, long after the CNN cameras stopped rolling.
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The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng		The Host by Stephenie Meyer
A remarkable debut, The Gift of Rain flashes back to a darkly opulent WWII-era Malaya. Phillip Hutton, the alienated British-Chinese son of a wealthy Penang trader, befriends a mysterious Japanese neighbor named Mr. Endo, who trains him in the ways of aikido. When the Japanese army invades, chaos reigns, and Phillip cannot offset the costs of his friendship with Endo. Eng's characters are as deep and troubled as the time in which the story takes place, and Phillip's narration is measured, believable and enthralling.		Stephenie Meyer, creator of the phenomenal teen-vamp Twilight series, takes paranormal romance into alien territory in her first adult novel, The Host. A species of altruistic parasites has assumed control of most humans, but Melanie Stryder won't surrender her mind to Wanderer, the alien soul that inhabits her body. Overwhelmed by Melanie's memories of Jared, a fellow resistor, Wanderer sets off into the desert to find him. Those wary of sci-fi will relish this mature, imaginative, and romantic thriller.
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